Fianna Fáil Senator Lisa Chambers has called on the Government to do more to help mothers who want to stay at home.

A recent Amarach Research opinion poll commissioned by The Iona Institute showed that 69pc of mothers with children under the age of 18 would prefer to stay at home with their children rather than go out to work if they could afford it.

Ms Chambers said that she could never have supported the word mother being taken out of the Constitution.

“It didn’t sit right with me, my gut told me that it wasn’t the right move.”

Ms Chambers described a Yes vote in the Care referendum as meaning taking a bit out and adding in a new section, and she said that while the 1937 wording might be a bit old fashioned, “there’s something in that”.

She said that Ireland needed to do more to allow people to stay at home if they want to. “I don’t think it’s a realistic option for lots of parents, particularly Mums, to stay at home if they want to, and that’s something we need to work on.”

Sinn Féin will not re-run the defeated referendums if they win the next election and form a Government despite a promise some weeks ago by Mary Lou McDonald to do exactly that.

Speaking on The Hard Shoulder yesterday, Sinn Féin TD and finance spokesperson Matt Carthy denied it would be a priority for them:

“It won’t be on our priority list at all… we have very important things that require to be changed in this society, above all housing and the need to reform our health services.”

He added: “We will not be re-running this referendum in the next Government”.

When launching Sinn Féin’s Yes-Yes campaign in February, leader Mary Lou McDonald said the party would re-run the questions with the wording proposed by the Citizens’ Assembly if it was elected to the next Government.

This now appears to be definitively ruled out.

“We got it wrong, quite simply,” Deputy Carthy said.

“We’re wrong because the people are always right, and the people told us emphatically what they think of this proposition.

“We have to reflect on that, we have to listen to that and above all, we have to respect it.”

Cork TD and leader of the Independent Ireland Party, Michael Collins, has hailed the rejection of the Government’s proposed changes to the constitution as “an event of generational and transformative significance that will echo all the way into the local and general election campaign.”

“An agenda that was inherently anti-woman, anti-carer, anti-disability rights and anti-marriage was resoundingly rejected by the vast majority of people who saw through the charlatanism of a government that has done nothing but relentlessly antagonise, infuriate and patronise people for the last number of years,” said Deputy Collins.

“The credibility gap that already existed between what this government says it wants for people and what it does in real terms has widened to become a chasm. People have had enough. They want government out and they want issues that actually impact their lives and the lives of their families brought in from the margins of political debate and returned to the centre stage where they belong.”

Referendums on the definition of family and on removing the protection offered to mothers in the home have been comprehensively defeated, as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar admitted the Government failed to convince the public and was given “two wallops” by the electorate.

The referendum on family – which proposed adding the term “durable relationships” to the Constitution – was defeated by a 2 to 1 margin with 67.69 per cent voting No.

The referendum on care – which proposed deleting the requirement to try and protect mothers from being forced out of the home due to “economic necessity” and replacing it with a gender-neutral recognition of care within the family – was also heavily defeated, with 73.9 per cent voting No. This was the greatest No vote in a referendum in the history of the State.

Aontú Party leader Peadar Tóibín said Children’s Minister, Roderick O’Gorman, has “serious questions to answer now in relation to this”.

He added that it was “incredible that Aontú was the only political party that campaigned against this”. He also said there is a bubble in the world of politics and that the Opposition also have questions to answer.

A retired medical scientist in the UK is facing trial following charges relating to her charitable work supporting women in crisis pregnancies.

Livia Tossici-Bolt, 62, held a sign reading “here to talk, if you want to” near an abortion facility in Bournemouth. While she held the sign, several individuals did approach Tossici-Bolt to discuss issues they were facing in their lives.

Local authorities confronted Tossici-Bolt, alleging that she had breached a local abortion “buffer zone”, which bans expression of approval or disapproval of abortion. They issued a Fixed Penalty Notice, which Tossici-Bolt refused to pay, on the grounds that she did not breach the terms of the PSPO, and had the right, protected under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act, to offer consensual conversations.

The Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole Council have proceeded to charge the volunteer, who awaits a trial date at Poole Magistates’ Court.

A coalition of medical professionals and disability rights advocates has expressed concern that the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Assisted Dying (JCAD) is ready to recommend legislating for euthanasia/assisted suicide in Ireland.

On Wednesday evening, the committee voted to allow people with just six months to live to avail of euthanasia/assisted suicide by nine votes to three. For those with a neurodegenerative condition, this could be extended to 12 months.

A person must be diagnosed with a disease, illness or medical condition which is incurable and irreversible, advanced, progressive and will cause death – and also that is expected to cause death within six months.

The committee is scheduled to issue its report on 20 March which will contain a number of recommendations.

Dr. Miriam Colleran of Hope Ireland said: “we’re surprised that the majority of committee members have taken such a different opinion to the Danish Ethics Committee which recently published a report (16 of 17 members) that safeguards could not be introduced to make assisted dying, euthanasia and / or assisted suicide safe.”

According to EU statistics agency Eurostat, the number of births in the bloc fell below four million for the first time on record in 2022 when 3.88 million children were born. The peak year was 1964 when 6.8 million were born.

Ireland had the steepest decline in fertility rates in 2022, falling from 1.78 live births per woman to 1.54 in a year − a drop of 13.5pc. Greece and Estonia recorded similar double-figure drops in fertility rates.

In 2020, when Covid hit, 55,959 babies were born in Ireland, which rose to 60,553 in 2021. In 2022, that dropped to 54,411 births.

Since 2011, the fertility rate here has decreased from 2.03 births per woman to 1.54.

The fertility rate was 1.46 live births per woman in the EU in 2022, a fall of 4.6pc and the first time on record it has dipped below 1.5.

The ‘wellbeing’ section of the draft curriculum says it wants to provide children with a “balanced, inclusive, age and developmentally-appropriate understanding of human development and sexuality”. It will include new areas of learning such as consent, digital wellbeing and diversity of family structures, as well as a renewed focus on relationships, emotions and feelings.

Teachers will be supported to make professional judgments on the needs of the children in their class and learning related to puberty may be taught “as appropriate” from third and fourth class upwards.

In addition, children will spend less time on so-called patron’s programmes, or denominational education, but will learn about religions, beliefs and world views as part of a new area of social and environmental education.

The reduction in time spent teaching religion alongside other reforms will give schools more “flexible time” – seven hours a month – to allow schools to focus on priority areas of learning decided by individual schools.

A ‘Yes’ vote in today’s two referendums would result in a “solicitors’ paradise”, according to the Leader of Aontú, Peadar Tóibín TD.

Speaking at a press conference in Buswells Hotel, the Meath West TD said the proposal to add ‘durable relationships’ is “a solicitors’ paradise, virtue signalling amendment a million miles from the lived reality of people’s lives”.

Calling for a no vote he said the Constitution is the fundamental legal document of Ireland, detailing the core rights of citizens and defines the responsibilities of the State. “It is not the location for either definition free amendments with potentially huge consequences or empty meaningless virtue signalling by the government”.

On the ‘Care’ Referendum, Deputy Tóibín said it will create a ceiling of responsibility, from a “neo-liberal” Taoiseach.

“I actually suspect the care amendment was written by the Department of Finance to protect a liability for the state”.

In the proposed wording, he said the state is not obliged to care for the person: “all they have to do is strive to help the person”.

He called it “toxic” to the care of people with disabilities and urged people to vote against it.

Ireland has the highest reported rate of gonorrhoea infection of 30 European countries, according to a new report.

The European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) said there has been a “troubling” rise in the most common sexually transmitted diseases across the continent.

Across the 30 countries in 2022, gonorrhoea cases rose by 48 per cent year on year, with syphilis cases up 34 per cent and chlamydia cases rising 16 per cent. Reported cases of other sexually transmitted diseases, including congenital syphilis, also increased substantially.

A record 3,812 cases of gonorrhoea were reported in Ireland in 2022, an increase of almost 60 per cent since 2018.